


Castiel Gets a Hobby

by mythras_fire



Category: Supernatural
Genre: A bit of humor at Dean's expense, Castiel has crafting skillz, Dean is Not Amused, Dean's cute when he blushes, Fluff, M/M, Mild Language, Sam IS the peanut gallery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 13:15:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9073285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythras_fire/pseuds/mythras_fire
Summary: Dean’s breath catches momentarily in his throat in confusion and then contemplation as his hand rises up a bit further to pat the material covering his head.The snickering has resumed from the peanut gallery across the room but quickly fades behind the rustle of newspaper when Dean tilts his head in that direction and levels an “I don’t have to know what’s going on to know I don’t like it” glare at Sam.“Do you like it, Dean?” Cas asks softly from the other side of the bed.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Taolee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taolee/gifts).



> Dedico este fic a Taolee- por si acaso quisieras traducirlo algún día, amiga, si te acuerdas de nuestra conversación de muchos años atrás XD. Hay escritoras lentas, muy lentas, pero muy muy lentas, y detrás de ellas soy yo ;P
> 
> ETA: I just recently read an article about Misha Collins in the magazine _American Craft_ (it's an amazing article! ♥) and found out that he knits during his downtime when they're taping the show! How awesome is that! XD He said that the first time Jensen saw him sitting there knitting in between takes, he came up to him and just stared at him for a moment before saying, in his quintessential tone of disbelief, "Really?" hahahaha. Misha said that he'll have Jensen knitting alongside him before long ;P ♥

~Day 1, 3pm, Sacred Heart Hospital~

 

Dean wakes up and wishes he hadn’t – his head is throbbing so strongly he’s absolutely certain it’s going to split in two any second if somebody doesn’t get him something for the pain RIGHT THE FUCK NOW. 

“Well, I guess we know he’ll live, his delightful demeanor is back full force,” comes a very familiar, gravelly deadpan voice.

Cas.

Huh. Dean blinks up at the ceiling. Guess he must have said that last part out loud. 

“Where did you suddenly develop a sense of humor from, Cas?” He croaks out. Damn, how long has he been out of it for his throat to be this dry?

“From ‘hanging out’ with you and Sam,” comes the sardonic reply, air quotes in full effect.

Rolling his eyes kicks Dean’s brain into overdrive and he starts piecing together the last few moments he remembers before blacking out and waking up in the hospital.

Again.

Dean thinks that he and Sammy have probably woken up in the hospital in almost every one of the lower 48 states, and some definitely more than others. Gotta be some kind of record there. Dean snorts, then winces at the pull on his parched throat. Some record. And hey, speaking of Sammy…

“He went to get you a cup of water and himself a coffee. The doctors said you would probably be waking up soon and it appears they were right.”

Dean’s head whips around toward the sound of Cas’ voice, away from the door where he’d been looking for his brother, and immediately regrets it when the room spins a little and he has to close his eyes for a moment to ward off the looming sense of vertigo.

“Hey, I thought I told you to stay outta…” Dean trails off lamely when faced with the sight before him.

Okay, maybe he _was_ already on painkillers and instead of making him feel better, they were making him feel like shit and as an added bonus they were making him hallucinate.

“I wasn’t in your head, Dean. I saw you focusing on the door with a concerned look on your face and came to the logical conclusion that you were looking for your brother,” the angel says dryly, sounding almost put-upon.

“I see what you mean, dear,” comes a rickety old woman’s voice from the same direction as Cas’ voice. 

Dean has to crane his neck upward to see who is in the next bed over, mostly hidden behind Dean’s hallucination of his angel sitting in one of those incredibly uncomfortable hospital chairs. 

With yarn in his hands.

Lots and lots of yarn.

Pink yarn.

Pink yarn being held taut between Cas’ outstretched palms. Maybe the lady is a hallucination, too, because she is currently winding the hideous pink stuff into a ball, using Cas as some sort of stand or something. And she sounds… sympathetic towards Cas or some shit. 

WTF?

Dean’s the one all banged up in the hospital here, not Cas!

“Mmhmm, you get used to it after a while... Now, what is it you do with the yarn once it has been wound into a ball?”

This scene is weirding Dean out. His head falls back down onto the pillow with a whoosh of air and an exhalation of all his remaining effort to understand Cas. Everything hurts too much to keep his eyes open and maybe if he keeps them closed for a while the hallucinations will go away.

“Well, dear, that’s when the fun begins and you can start your project!”

Dean promptly passes out.

 

~Day 2, 3 am, Sacred Heart Hospital~

 

Dean wakes up coughing and blindly reaches for the cup of water he vaguely remembers being set on the hospital tray next to his bed when Sam had come in earlier last night to check on him before going back to the motel to grab forty winks. And more rock salt from the Impala.

He almost spills the water cup trying to pick it up but the cool brush of air over his face and the accompanying warmth of a hand over his announces Castiel’s continued presence in his hospital room. 

“Thanks, Cas,” Dean sighs out, already exhausted from the aborted attempt to grab his water cup.

“You’re welcome, Dean,” he hears the angel reply softly, followed by another warm hand gently grasping the back of his neck – tickling the hairs that are suddenly standing on end and sending a shiver down his spine – to tilt his head forward enough to sip some of the pleasantly cool, albeit metallic-tasting water. 

Right before he’s about to drift off back to sleep his head rolls to the right to confirm that Cas is still there, watching over him. He’d eat his Zeppelin tapes before he ever admitted it to Sammy but he’s grown so used to having Cas there to guard his sleep over the past few years that he finds it hard to fall asleep sometimes until he does his Cas-check.

“Sleep well, Dean. I will be here when you wake up.”

On the other hand – stupid angels and their stupid mind-reading tricks. 

Dean musters the necessary strength for a glare at the resumed intrusion into his private thoughts but his facial muscles only achieve a confused grimace as his bleary eyes encounter his angel settling back into his chair to resume working with some kind of needle-hook thing and what looks to be that horrible pink yarn from the lady in the next bed over. 

Sonofabitch! That’s just great. Now he’s having nightmares of Cas doing needlepoint or whatever-the-fuck. 

Dean whimpers slightly before turning as much to his other side as he can, missing the concerned look on his angel’s face as he succumbs once more to sleep.

 

~Day 2, 11 am, Sacred Heart Hospital~

 

Dean is dreaming. It’s been awhile since he actually dreamt for real but experience has taught him that the really good stuff they pump you full of in the hospital does the trick every time. Sometimes he wishes it didn’t have to take an IV dripping morphine and who-knows-what-else into his system to get him to the dock with a fishing pole in one hand and a cold one in the other but Dean is nothing if not a realist. So, he just shrugs and settles back into his chair a little more, getting comfy.

After a few minutes of peaceful contemplation of the placid lake surface – which alludes to the kind of fishing trip he’s unfortunately had one too many times – he starts to feel warmer than usual. At first, he attributes it to sitting in the sun but the exposed skin of his arms doesn’t feel like it’s getting sunburned. In fact, only his head feels warm, like there’s something wrapped around it, trapping in the body heat that is trying to dissipate into the mild summer breeze.

Dean’s attempt to reach up and pull off whatever’s wrapped around his head is what wakes him up. Well, that and somebody snickering across the room. Rather loudly, too. Ah, the call of the Sasquatch. Dean thinks about rolling his eyes but seeing as they’re still closed, he heaves a sigh instead and returns to the task of deciphering what the nurses have done to him now.

Did he fall out of bed in his sleep and bang his head on something?

Did he have a bandage on his head earlier and just doesn’t remember it?

Worried that he’s injured more gravely than he originally thought, Dean opens his eyes and immediately searches the room for Cas. He knows Gigantor is sprawled along the opposite wall, reading through the local newspaper, looking for cases because, well, Dean’s not exactly going anywhere in the state he’s in and they can always use the money. 

No, Dean is looking for Cas because if he has a Cas-check before going to sleep, you can be damn sure he has one for when he wakes up. If only to have some normalcy in his otherwise shitty unpredictable life.

He finds him, in the same spot he saw him in his nightmare last night, to the right of his bed, thankfully just doing his freaky-angel-head-tilt thing, nothing in his lap or hands.

“Good morning, Dean,” Cas says quietly, head still tilted like he’s not sure if Dean’s really awake this time or not. Dean’s head still feels warmer than the rest of him and in turning to the side to look for Cas he realizes for the first time that his forehead itches. ‘Nothing new there,’ Dean thinks as he reaches up to scratch at the bandage above his right eye. Bandages are a bitch to wear for any length of time cuz they start rubbing against your arm, leg, wherever, and make you wanna scratch right through the wool… wait a second… wool? Since when are bandages made of wool?

Dean’s breath catches momentarily in his throat in confusion and then contemplation as his hand rises up a bit further to pat the material covering his head.

The snickering has resumed from the peanut gallery across the room but quickly fades behind the rustle of newspaper when Dean tilts his head in that direction and levels an “I don’t have to know what’s going on to know I don’t like it” glare at Sam.

“Do you like it, Dean?” Cas asks softly from the other side of the bed.

The older Winchester turns back to contemplate his angel. “Like what?” he asks, hand momentarily stilling over the strange woolen bandage.

Cas looks… odd. Ok, well, odder than usual. If that were still Jimmy Novak sittin’ there, Dean would say he looked almost hopeful with anticipation or something. Like he’s waiting to see if Dean approves or not. Approves of what, he doesn’t have a fucking clue, however. Dean’s not used to seeing that look on Cas. He’s used to seeing him do the angelic equivalent of the eye-roll by staring a hole through Dean in a show of disappointment at whatever order from Heaven Dean’s disobeyed this time. 

Dean’s not sure this is an improvement. It makes him lick his lips and scratch his eyebrow in nervousness. Cas tracks the motion with his eyes, a slight crease forming on his forehead. Ah, that’s more like it. Dean can handle the frown. That’s familiar territory for him so he sighs a little and waits for the angel to reply. 

Cas just glances back up at Dean’s bandage. 

Now it’s Dean’s turn to frown. “You mean the bandage on my head?”

Cas is staring at him now and Dean knows he’s just seconds away from getting the patented Angel Glare of Disappointment. So he pulls on the wool that apparently isn’t part of the bandage he thought was wrapped around his head and looks away from Cas… to contemplate the hat in his right hand. 

The woolen-woven-needlepoint-whatever hat. 

The *pink* woolen-woven-needlepoint-whatever hat.

Dean turns it around in his hand. Looks more like a beanie from the short round shape of it. Even has a little rim around the bottom and some sort of simple zig zag pattern.

“What is this?” Dean manages to say.

“It’s a hat, ~~you idiot~~ Dean. A ‘beanie’ I am told. Do you like it?”

And fuck, now Dean can hear the anticipation in his angel’s voice, which doesn’t exactly make him want to look over at him.

He clears his throat uncomfortably. “You uh, you made this… for me?” his eyes still on the beanie. 

Dean can feel the heat on his cheeks and knows there’s nothing he can do to hide it cuz there’s nowhere for him to go. So, he might as well look over at Cas and get this over with.

But when he does finally turn his head to the right, the angel isn’t looking at him and Dean notices that he hasn’t answered him yet either. He’s got his hands clasped in his lap and he’s studying them in minute detail.

“Cas?” Dean is confused. He’s never been given anything handmade before. 

“Yes, Dean?” The angel looks up immediately at the call of his name, a hint of wariness in those clear, blue eyes.

 _I’ll always come when you call_.

Dean has often felt discomfited with the amount of power he somehow seems to wield over this celestial being and right now he’s feeling it like WHOA. He does his best to stomp on the instinct to cut and run – backless hospital gown be damned – and forces out the question he knows Sam “Feelings” Winchester would never have a problem asking, “Uh, why did you make this for me?”

He pauses to rub the back of his neck and glance over at Sam, but the newspaper’s still conveniently hiding its reader behind the black and white columns so he looks back down at the beanie that he’s been absentmindedly turning over in his hands. “I mean, um, thanks, and, and all. It looks… it’s very uh, and sure is warm, that musta been what was… I wondered why my head felt so hot, wool’s good for that, y’know-”

“You’re welcome, Dean,” Cas interrupts his rambling, awkward display of gratitude.

Dean chances a look to his right. The angel no longer looks cautious. There is a placid look on the holy tax accountant’s face. The closest thing Dean usually takes for a smile.

Dean clears his throat again. “When did you learn how to…” He starts gesticulating with the beanie to make up for the Home Ec. holes in his vocabulary.

Cas tilts his head to one side in concentration before the proverbial light goes on and he picks up on what Dean’s trying to say. “Crochet? Last night. The nice lady in the bed next to yours was kind enough to teach me.”

Dean cranes his neck for a moment to peer around Cas. The bed is empty now, ready for the next patient.

“She went home earlier this morning. She told me to tell you that you’re going to really appreciate that beanie come winter.”

A pointed cough suddenly comes from the other side of the room and Dean could have sworn he heard his brother mumble something but it’s too garbled and Cas continues on, oblivious to the nuances of cough-speak. Dean rolls his eyes anyway, knowing that Sammy won’t be able to resist telling him again later to rub whatever it is in his face.

He groans as the realization hits him that what he saw last night wasn’t a drug-induced hallucination after all.

Cas pauses, concern now prominent in his tone of voice. “Dean? Are you in pain?”

The hunter covers his face with his free hand.

“You mean that was for real? Aww, man.”

The snickering from the peanut gallery resumes and Dean’s willing to bet it’s not as a result of Garfield's latest attempt to hypnotize Jon into serving lasagna for dinner every night.

 

~Day 3, 7am, Sacred Heart Hospital~

 

“Did you get everything from the bathroom?”

“Yes, Dean.”

“Cuz last time you left my brand-new toothbrush and razor in there and I’d only gotten to use them once! What about my magazines, did you grab those?”

“Yes, Dean.”

“And the clothes I was wearin’ when that harpy bitch tried to carry me away are still in one piece?”

Dean cringes slightly at the memory and looks at his brother over the back of the stupid wheelchair that the stupid hospital makes him sit in before they’ll discharge him every single stupid time he ends up here. He has to crane his neck to the point where he’s worried he’ll tip out of the chair, his little brother is so tall.

“Yes, Dear.”

Dean narrows his eyes menacingly. 

Sam clears his throat and apologizes in a sorry-not-sorry kind of way.

“Bitch.”

“Jerk.”

“They’d better be, that’s my favorite jacket. My only jacket right now,” Dean continues. “And it’s gettin’ cold.”

He does a final check of the room, which of course includes one Angel of the Lord, who seems to be conspicuously absent.

Dean scratches his head, trying to remember if Cas was present the last time he was conscious, and his fingers meet with super soft, plush – er, um, super scratchy, totally uncomfortable wool, and blushes. 

And there goes that peanut gallery again… 

Bastards. Both of them.

 

The End

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first effort at writing a Supernatural fic, so I'm a little nervous... 0_o


End file.
